None of the unbaptized in the New Testament is called a saint. Can people who are outside the Covenant, outside the Church, be called saints? Can those who are not grafted into the only root of holiness, Christ, be saints? (Romans 11:16) Consequently, calling the children of Christians saints, Ap. Paul testifies that they belong to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints (1 Cor. 1:2, i.e. baptized). And vice versa: the children of the Gentiles are unclean not because they are corrupt, but because they are not cleansed by the grace of Christ.

Thus, the passage in question speaks not in favor of, but against this argument of the Baptists. The absurdity of their understanding of this verse is as follows: let us imagine that the Protestant interpretation of it is really correct. Children are holy by birth and sanctified by a believing mother, and therefore there is no need to baptize them. In this light, the same will have to be said about the husband of a believing wife. If he, while still a pagan, became holy thanks to a believing wife, then there is no need to baptize him, accepting him into Christianity. Following the same logic, people who grew up in Christian families should not be baptized either, since Rogozin's slip of the tongue "while children" in Ap. Paul is absent. Then one of the conditions for baptism will be the absence of Christian relatives. For those who have them no longer need baptism, for they have already been sanctified.

There is another important point here. If in all other cases Baptists try to reduce baptism to an oath, promise, testimony, etc., which children are not capable of, then here baptism is already interpreted as sanctification. And already proceeding from the fact that children, they say, have already been sanctified, they do not need baptism (i.e., they do not need consecration). Thus, in order to insist on the argument of (1 Cor. 7:14), it is necessary to cross out all other rationalistic arguments such as: "Where there is no such (conscious) faith, there can be no birth again, and if so, then baptism itself is inadmissible... Baptism must be accepted... only those who believe." [50] We have considered the inconsistency of such arguments above, but the internal disagreement of the Protestant arguments should have been noted by them themselves.

The Catholic Church, having dogmatized the legal principle in theology, nevertheless continues to baptize infants. Catholics do not abolish infant baptism, although in order to explain its necessity, they are sometimes forced to resort to significant stretches, since the naturalness of infant baptism does not follow from legal theology, but rather the opposite. Only in Orthodox theology is the baptism of children organically in harmony with its entire context and is naturally a consequence of it. The Catholic Church, continuing to baptize children, has become like a bald old man, who, nevertheless remembering the need to carefully comb his curls, continues to regularly run a comb over his bald head. Catholics know that the Church has always baptized children, but the answer to why it did so has been almost entirely eroded by Western jurisprudence. Obviously, the appearance of confirmation in the Catholic Church is not accidental, but a compromise step towards overcoming this gap in theology and argumentation.

"Infant baptism provided the state with a suitable element in the person of people baptized in childhood, but unconscious and passive, ready to obey not only good, but also evil, if it is clothed in 'noble' and 'lofty' ideas,"[51] says P.I. Rogozin. But, Saints Cyril and Methodius, Equal-to-the-Apostles, whom he himself presents to the reader as true evangelists in the Russian land, were baptized in childhood and recognized children's baptism. Should they be expelled from the ranks of Christians for the fact that the Thessaloniki brothers brought Orthodoxy to Russia, and not Protestantism?

"It should be noted that in the monastic milieu there were people who were sincere and ideological. As, for example: Seraphim of Sarov, Sergius of Radonezh and others." [52] remarks the same theologian, apparently realizing that their spiritual experience cannot be crossed out only for the reason that their baptism does not correspond to Protestant dogma (they, like many others, were also baptized in childhood). Yes, St. Seraphim of Sarov and St. Sergius of Radonezh were "sincere and ideological," but none of them came up with the "idea" of crossing each other. Including the father of Protestantism, Martin Luther. In 1522, he categorically condemned those who rejected infant baptism. In particular, the Anabaptist movement that arose at that time in the person of Niklos Storch, Thomas Drexel and Mark Stübmer. Luther himself was baptized as a child and refused to be rebaptized, citing himself as an example proving the grace of infant baptism. "That the baptism of children is pleasing to Christ is sufficiently proved by His own act, namely, by the fact that God makes many of them saints, and gave them the Holy Spirit, who were thus baptized, and now there are still many of them, by whom it is evident that they have the Holy Spirit, both according to their teaching and according to their lives; As we are given by the mercy of God... If God had not accepted the baptism of children, it means that at all times before this day not a single person on earth has been a Christian... Wherefore we say that it is not the most important thing for us whether the person being baptized believes or not, for this does not make baptism untrue, but everything depends on the word and commandment of God. Baptism is nothing else but water and the word of God, one with the other. My faith does not perform baptism, but receives it." [53]

Historically, it is difficult for Baptists to justify their position of denying the baptism of children. More precisely, it is impossible, because, in one way or another, they have to assert that the doctrine of baptism of adults only "was at that time (the sixteenth century) a completely unknown idea, which still had to win many supporters in the future." [54] In such a situation, I think it is clear to Baptists that if a certain teaching of the Church of the Lord and God has been firmly "forgotten" and then "remembered" fourteen centuries later, then this very circumstance speaks of its falsity. For the Church is the House of God, the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), and no one can steal from this House a single teaching or a single promise of the Lord.

The incompatibility of these two propositions forces Baptist theologians to attempt to draw a successive line of denial of the baptism of children throughout the centuries-old history of the Church. And since this task is practically impossible, Baptists have to resort to significant omissions and generalizations, then to juggle facts. Here is one such masterpiece: "(in the history of the Church) only a few minorities have occasionally spoken out against such practices. One such group was the Donatists (3rd century A.D.) in North Africa, most of whom remained faithful to the principle of baptism of adult believers. Between the eighth and thirteenth centuries, a group known as the Patarini emerged in northern Italy, denouncing the practice of infant baptism as erroneous. The influence of the Patarini was especially great in Milan. Beranjar of Tours, who died in 1088, was critical of the then prevalent magical concepts of the mysteries. For this he was condemned as a heretic in Liège... Some Petrobrusians in the twelfth century also rejected infant baptism, saying that only adult believers should be baptized. The Waldenses set forth their belief in the baptism of believers in the twelfth article of their confession... In the fourteenth century, John Wycliffe and his followers, the Lollards, rejected infant baptism. In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Bohemian brothers, followers of Jan Hus, were persecuted for denying the necessity of infant baptism. Thus, it can be concluded that there was a certain continuity among small groups who probably adhered to the New Testament concept of regeneration and baptism of believers. This continuity existed until the beginning of the Protestant Reformation." [55]

First, in all of the above movements, the rejection of infant baptism was not the main idea or reason for their separation from Catholicism.

Во-вторых, у многих из них были серьёзные ереси даже с точки зрения баптистов, что исключает возможность проведения преемственности единого духа. Например, донатисты совершенно иначе смотрели на осуществление таинств и на святость Церкви, нежели баптисты. Они отрицали даже крещение взрослых (как и всякое другое таинство), если совершавший его священнослужитель не был кристально чист и непорочен. По этой же причине отделившись от Церкви, требовали от своих последователей строжайшего аскетизма. Кроме того, донатисты “возрождали раннехристианский культ мучеников... а позже, когда движение приняло яркую социальную окраску – его сторонники грабили и убивали богатых, духовенство, освобождали рабов” и т.д.[56]

В-третьих, в этой “преемственности” нет даже хронологической непрерывной последовательности. Вышеприведённые скачки в столетия (например, с III по VIII, или с VIII по XIII вв.) и крайне поверхностное обозрение и ориентиры также подрывают историчность этой апологии. Например, как понимать: “между VIII и XIII веками... возникла группа, известная как патарины”? К тому же эта группа настолько малоизвестна, что во многих словарях и исторических справочниках они не упоминаются.

В-четвёртых, о какой преемственности может идти речь при такой очевидной хронологически и доктринальной разрозненности этих “небольших групп�

В-пятых, все они отрицали католическое понимание крещения детей, которое отрицаем и мы.

История Церкви - это непрерывная борьба с ересями и расколами. И с этим трудно не согласиться. А значит, красивую фразу: "Вековые заблуждения принимались сменявшимися поколениями безоговорочно"[57] правильнее было бы классифицировать как заблуждение.